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I think there are not that many artists out there who are able to make nice 3d models.
What we did with MegaGlest is to make modding the game VERY easy. even kids can do this and by this we go more and more people who mainly make artwork and many mods! The big benefit that even other OpenSource projects will have from this, is the fact that there are many people now, learning how to use blender/gimp to make 3d models! So give the people really easy ways to modify things and you will see many more artists soon, who simply have fun to create good artwork for open source games .

examples what modders do! ( That they cannot do more is mainly a problem of the older engine :-( ) :

Comment

I think there are not that many artists out there who are able to make nice 3d models.
What we did with MegaGlest is to make modding the game VERY easy. even kids can do this and by this we go more and more people who mainly make artwork and many mods! The big benefit that even other OpenSource projects will have from this, is the fact that there are many people now, learning how to use blender/gimp to make 3d models! So give the people really easy ways to modify things and you will see many more artists soon, who simply have fun to create good artwork for open source games .

examples what modders do! ( That they cannot do more is mainly a problem of the older engine :-( ) :

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The solution is simple. 1. Stop peddling Blender as the solution to everything. Blender has a SHIT interface and it won't get better by just claiming "aww you don't want to invest time" that argument is bullshit. Caligari Truespace hasn't got half the modern stuff blender has yet it makes better art because it's easy to use, and it's been a dead project for like 5 years now. Open source projects need reasonable tools. The lack of reasonable level editors/importing tools hinders development massively. I don't want to develop freespace 2 mods/levels on windows I want to do it on linux. But none of the tools are linux native. FIX IT. I shouldn't have to because I'm art focussed not code focussed. BTW I AM trying to fix these complaints by editing mg2modeller.sf.net but fixing C code memory leaks is a total bitch and I haven't got the time to waste on it. I am hitting coding brick walls because funnily enough I'm not a school-trained programmer. Vegastrike massively suffers from this. Great engine, shit editing tools. I'm tired of asking for this for ten years, I'm tired of seeing stuff like the Wing Commander Saga project being 1000x better than Vegastrike because a mod team on Windows can actually make missions and playtest them without needing to know python, and function calls. Open source gaming is shit because open source game development is shit. FIX the engines by making decent tools. An engine that runs UT5 graphics but has no level editor is a BROKEN engine and until open source game devs realise this their games will continue to be broken. The same issue runs across all levels of Open Source game development. Really amazing code, but no tools to leverage that code in useful ways.

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The solution is simple. 1. Stop peddling Blender as the solution to everything. Blender has a SHIT interface and it won't get better by just claiming "aww you don't want to invest time" that argument is bullshit. Caligari Truespace hasn't got half the modern stuff blender has yet it makes better art because it's easy to use, and it's been a dead project for like 5 years now. Open source projects need reasonable tools. The lack of reasonable level editors/importing tools hinders development massively. I don't want to develop freespace 2 mods/levels on windows I want to do it on linux. But none of the tools are linux native. FIX IT. I shouldn't have to because I'm art focussed not code focussed. BTW I AM trying to fix these complaints by editing mg2modeller.sf.net but fixing C code memory leaks is a total bitch and I haven't got the time to waste on it. I am hitting coding brick walls because funnily enough I'm not a school-trained programmer. Vegastrike massively suffers from this. Great engine, shit editing tools. I'm tired of asking for this for ten years, I'm tired of seeing stuff like the Wing Commander Saga project being 1000x better than Vegastrike because a mod team on Windows can actually make missions and playtest them without needing to know python, and function calls. Open source gaming is shit because open source game development is shit. FIX the engines by making decent tools. An engine that runs UT5 graphics but has no level editor is a BROKEN engine and until open source game devs realise this their games will continue to be broken. The same issue runs across all levels of Open Source game development. Really amazing code, but no tools to leverage that code in useful ways.

ok i will give you 3ds max and blender, then you will make some models, we will se HOW INTERFACE AFFECT WORK RESULT.

it have nothing to do with it. belive me. you seed some fud.

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It is not about 3ds max vs blender, it is about mouse based modelling vs coordinate based modelling. menu driven modelling vs button/toolbar driven modelling. All 3d modellers have their own style of interface. My personal style relies heavily on box modelling/subdivision tools and easy to grab menu buttons and a coordinate editor. This is the caligari truespace interface: Compare it to blender. The interfaces are completely different. In the bottom left corner of truespace I have instant access to location/rotation/scale coordinates and if I select an object by face/line/poly/object I can rotate/modify those modifiers instantly. In Blender the same access to operations exists. But it doesn't flow as well. This guy explains it far more eloquently than I can: http://royalexander.wordpress.com/20...odels-for-xna/ Blender is a capable tool but it will never work as well to someone who's used to the workflow of TrueSpace. What Blender should do because they've got a very powerful/capable core, is make multiple frontend guis. Blender should ask you at startup, do you want to be editing Maya style, 3DSMax style, Lightwave style, Blender style, or TrueSpace style. Some modellers never touch their keyboard, others only use the keyboard. the lack of tools to accomodate for all the styles doesn't help people move to Blender. It's not FUD either. I've spent 10 years trying to get truespace running properly in wine, I submitted tons of dumps and debug info to wine, I eventually gave up the lack of support and started trying to finish another person's 3d modelling tool mg^2 modeller, which was a truespace port to linux as mg2modeller (ported to GTK+ 2.0) but the memory holes and my overall lack of coding knowledge has hampered my efforts. There is nothing FUD in what I say. I am explaining my experiences with OSS game development. Lack of tools, specifically tools that fit my workflow habits has totally killed my enthusiasm for developing open source games over the last 10 years. It hasn't gotten better either. I look every 6-12 months at Blender and Gimp to see what's going on. You can tell a guy to just learn the new style, but it won't make him learn it. I follow phoronix.com/linuxgames.com/freegamer.blogspot.com The projects with the best art are always reimplementations of closed source games, or cancelled closed games that released their assets like 0AD. Hell the best open source artist I've ever met was a guy working on MARS Land of no Mercy (I met him IRL btw) using blender/gimp to make terrain art and he gave up when the project died.

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As mentiones, Opengameart. the problem with it is that it is a poor substitute for your own art team, because of the diversity of styles and quality. It is good for some test or initial work, no more. Also, you have no control over the modelling methods. for example, to test the scene editor Im building, I need single mesh, single material/texture models, because the engine is still at early stage and cant handle multimesh/multimaterial objects. Hard to find a model with such requirements. Do you need a man/woman pair of models, textured and animated? Not the place to search, and I dont remember an animated model in OGA with some minimum quality (any correction on this matter is welcome).
Art is not like code. You can copy&paste code and fix it in 5 minutes. You cant download art and fix it in 5 minutes.

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I never even knew of mg^2.
It seems interesting. And I'll have a look at it when time allows...
Which is unfortunately the problem for us coders too.
I used to create 3D editing tools as a student. None of them really worked that great, and I could never get Blender to do anything useful either.

So, consider me interested DMJC. I just need to finish moving home, and then finish planning the wedding, and somehow find time to do it :P

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I fully agree with your comment about laking modding/editing capabilities in foss games. But your rant about blender seems to be out of place. You could also go on rant about how maya, modo, silo, sketchup etc are different from your preferred workflow.

Check cgcookie.com, blenderguru.com and blenderartists.org to see what is possible with blender if you are not afraid to learn how to use it and adapt your workflow.

Btw there is a maya keymap preset in blender afaik. And if you are following the blender development, why not posting a screenshot of the current interface instead of the 2.12 version?